The present invention relates to a photographing apparatus and method.
Photographing apparatuses, such as digital cameras, may illuminate a subject by emitting a strobe light when capturing a still image. Photographing apparatuses may use a contrast method to perform focus control prior to performing photographing. However, the contrast method increases the likelihood of focusing on a bright side of the subject. Therefore, photographing apparatuses may emit the strobe light to perform focus control prior to performing photographing.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-323080 (“JP '080”) and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-46231 (“JP '231”) disclose emitting an auxiliary light to a subject by using a light emitting diode (LED) to perform focus control. Also, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-352252 (“JP '252”) discloses using an LED as a main light.
However, photographing apparatuses need a large amount of current to emit a high luminance LED equal to the strobe light in order to obtain the luminance of a subject. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce power consumption as much as possible in relation to emitting an auxiliary light to perform focus control prior to photographing. Also, although the auxiliary light is emitted to perform focus control when a subject is near, it is impossible to obtain contrast information due to a saturated image when a high luminance auxiliary light is emitted. However, when a low luminance auxiliary light is emitted, although it is possible to detect a peak from the contrast information, the precision of the peak is inaccurate due to noise or detection results are inconsistent when the peak is repeatedly detected.